Journal of the American Oriental Society 131.2 (2011) 223 The Authorship and Signicance of the Nujūm al-ʿulūm: A Sixteenth-Century Astrological Encyclopedia from Bijapur E F Ng Technological University, Singapore On the 17th of August 1570, a scribe in the kingdom of Bijapur completed an ambitious, highly complex, and sumptuously illustrated work on astrology and astral magic. 1 Housed in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, the manuscript is not identified by a title in the text, but takes its name from a note inscribed on the first folio, which describes it as the Nujūm al-ʿulūm (“Stars of the Sciences”). 2 To date, the Nujūm al-ʿulūm has attracted schol- arly attention for the richness and spectacular nature of its illustrations—some four hun- dred—which depict a dazzling variety of angels, anthropomorphized planets, zodiac signs and degrees, talismans, magical spells, astrological tables and horoscopes, tantric goddesses, horses, elephants, and weapons. 3 Following brief notices by art historians such as Stella Kramrisch, Hermann Goetz, Douglas Barrett, and Mark Zebrowski, the author of the Chester Beatty Library catalogue, Linda York Leach, compiled a comprehensive description of the Nujūm’s miniatures, together with the miniatures of a second, more crudely executed copy of the Nujūm al-ʿulūm, also housed in the Chester Beatty Library and tentatively dated to 1660–80. 4 More recently, Deborah Hutton’s insightful and detailed analyses of several of the Nujūm miniatures have opened a window onto the diverse cultural influences circulating at the Bijapur court. 5 The brilliance and abundance of the Nujūm’s paintings have tended to overshadow the equally interesting details of the manuscript’s text, which has suffered from disproportionate scholarly neglect, even in a field that has been characterized by a lack of sustained schol- arly interest in the textual side of such documents. The continuing predominance of Persian chronicles as the main source for the study of the medieval Deccan and the general schol- arly indifference to astrology and magic as fields of serious historical inquiry into medieval Indian history have doubtless contributed to obscuring the importance of the Nujūm as a his- torical document. The recent “discovery” of a third copy of the Nujūm al-ʿulūm in the library 1. Itmām yāfta shud bi-martaba va daraja ikhtitām mukhtatim kashīd bi-tārīkh-i chahārdahum-i māh-i rabīʿ al-awwal sana 978 (“completed to the degree and minute and sealed on the fourteenth day of the month Rabīʿ I in the year 978”), Chester Beatty MS IN2, f. 171r. 2. F. 1r, cited in Linda York Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, vol. 2: Paintings of the Deccan and Kashmir (London: Scorpion Cavendish, 1995), 819. 3. Leach identifies four hundred miniatures, but, as she notes, the total number depends on the way they are evaluated; if each of the thirty degrees of each zodiac sign is counted, the total number of paintings would be approximately 780. See ibid. Barrett and Gray suggest that the total number of miniatures is 876; see Douglas Bar- rett and Basil Gray, Treasures of Asia: Painting of India (Geneva: Skira, 1963), 117. 4. Thomas Arnold, The Library of A. Chester Beatty: A Catalogue of the Indian Miniatures, rev. and ed. J. V. S. Wilkinson (London: Emery, Walker, 1936), 2–4; Stella Kramrisch, A Survey of Painting in the Deccan (London: India Society, 1937), 120–42; Douglas Barrett, “Painting at Bijapur,” in Paintings from Islamic Lands, ed. R. Pinder Wilson (Oxford: Cassirer, 1969), 142–59; Mark Zebrowski, Deccani Painting (London: Sotheby Publications, 1983); Hermann Goetz, “La peinture indienne: Les écoles du Dekkan,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 13 (1935): 281, 283; Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, 819–89. For a description of the later copy of the Nujūm al-ʿulūm (Chester Beatty Library MS IN54), see Leach, Mughal and Other Indian Paintings, 891–903. 5. Deborah Hutton, Art of the Court of Bijapur (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 2006), chap. 2.